Saturday, April 12, 2014

Good Riddance to the Second Wal*Mart 2014 Heritage Blaster

The sad truth is that while I like the 2014 Heritage set, I've become completely jaded in terms of collecting the thing. The sheer amount of short prints is daunting (after all, I still need short prints from the 2011 Heritage AND the 2009 Heritage sets)! You would think I would have known better before buying any of this year's version of Heritage.

Alas, I love the '65 design too much - easily one of my favorite Topps base designs ever (not just from the 60s). Even worse, I love the old fashioned card stock that Topps uses (another great draw for the Heritage line)...and getting the chance to get on card autographs of current and retired players (not just stars) is always fun. Unfortunately, I haven't actually hit a single autograph - or any other "rare" card...and as a bit of a spoiler, I still won't when I finish showing off this blaster today.

Speaking of showing off, let's get through the rest of the drivel...and then see just how close I actually end up to having the set complete...

Nothing like a card celebrating walks... Actually, Topps screwed up here. In 1965, Joe Morgan actually led the NL in walks with 97 (McCovey had 88 and finished third behind Joe and Rocky Colavito). It would have been a much greater card (at least for a Reds' fan) if Topps had featured both Votto and Morgan. In case you were wondering who was second in walks in 2013...it was another Red (Shin-Soo Choo). Choo had 112 walks which was still 23 behind Votto's 135 walks last year!

And that ends the blaster. I admit that I like the Then & Now insert a lot - it helped cheer me up at least a bit... In terms of short prints, I now own exactly 4 out of the 75 short prints...and that is after 4 rack packs and two blasters. I think you can see why I'm feeling jaded.

At this point, I will trade for short prints but I think I'm mostly going to focus on getting the short set this year (cards 1 -425). Maybe I'll get lucky and have someone send me a boat load of short prints...but I doubt I'll be buying much in the way of Heritage.

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comments:

I guess this is where the retail vs. hobby argument comes into play. I opened quite a few retail rack packs and blasters, and had about the same success as you did with pulling the SPs. A hobby box is a bit more expensive up front, but you tend to pull better cards for trade value and are pretty much guaranteed 8-9 of the SPs. My local shop sells boxes at a discount vs. the online guys ($72 + tax as opposed to $72.95 + shipping). I don't know what your access to hobby wax is or what they are charging for it.